With the release of Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation now upon us, a film that will undoubtedly clean up at the box office and remind us that Tom Cruise's Peter Pan like action skills still rock, there's one man in the cast that won't be relying on bangs or wallops to wow us - just steely-eyed grit and a dry wit. The man is of course Alec Baldwin, a thesp that, spent most of the eighties starring in yawnsome popcorn pleasers, the nineties churning out more misses than hits, but then found his stride in the nougties to become one of the most intriguing character actors to watch on the big and small screen. The rise and rise of Baldwin is one to marvel at, with directors such as James Foley, Martin Scorsese and now Christopher McQuarrie slotting the star into their movies, in turn giving him a chance to elevate the most basic of roles into something immensely watchable - hey, even his turn in Pearl Harbour wasn't half bad, given the material he had to work with. During Baldwin's ongoing halcyon phase he flirted with Oscar just the once (more on that later) but looking at his slate of upcoming movies - Warren Beatty's yet-to-be-titled Howard Hughes flick and sports heart-tugger Concussion both show promise - there's every chance that the man who made superheroes look cool, before they were cool, in The Shadow could well see those Emmys gain a new buddy come the next award season. Here are his best and worst movies...
Shaun is a former contributor for a number of Future Publishing titles and more recently worked as a staffer at Imagine Publishing.
He can now be found banking in the daytime and writing a variety of articles for What Culture, namely around his favourite topics of film, retro gaming, music, TV and, when he's feeling clever, literature.
